October 10, 2022 • 21 mins
Episode 22 -We speak with Jordan Ritenour Founder & CEO Clearlaw.ai
Jordan shares his story about why he started Clearlaw.ai and the importance of data visibility for today's successful organizations. He takes us through specialized artificial intelligence in the market why it is important and gives his thoughts on the Job Apocalypse and the fear of AI replacing human labor.
About Clearlaw.ai:
We add superpowers to your CLM or ELM:
While Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) or Enterprise Legal Management (ELM) technologies help legal teams manage the contracting process, Clearlaw's expertise is in contract content analysis and extraction.
Born as an AI-native company, our technology plugs into your existing tools to deliver the contracting data you need throughout the contracting lifecycle, from intake to renewal, and whether it is your standard template or third-party paper.
Learn More:
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Play the King (00:00):
This podcast is sponsored by OMI, the company
that makes CRM Work! Today'sguest is Jordan Ritenour, the
founder and CEO of ClearLaw.
Jordan, welcome.
I'm really excited to talk withyou.
The first thing I want to askyou about is something that I
noticed on the ClearLaw Landingpage.
And you know, you get there andyou see in big letters, big
words.
We're closing the data deficitfor legal teams.
(00:22):
And I wonder what you mean bydata deficit?
Jordan Ritenour (00:25):
Yeah, Well, first, thanks for having me.
It's great to be here with youand yeah, we're closing on the
data deficit for legal.
That's something we hear fromcustomers, from prospects all
the time.
The legal team, in-house,corporate legal teams.
They feel like they're at a datadeficit, compared to their
counterparts, whether it's, youknow, at the C-suite level and
CMO or whatever the case or justthe individual contributors who
(00:50):
see all the data that'savailable and usable and
presentable by marketing andsales and operations.
Legal feels like, yeah, we knowhow many contracts we reviewed
last quarter.
We have some insights around howI'm spending my time.
But a lot of the data that wouldbe useful for them resides in a
(01:13):
executed, signed PDF contract,somewhere on a share drive or,
you know, Google Drive, somerepository.
And really for them to get valuefrom that, they have to go in
and do a lot more work,searching and finding, then
putting that data into maybe anExcel spreadsheet or Salesforce.
(01:35):
So we're trying to help themunderstand what's in the
contract without them having todo that work.
And so we turn contractuallanguage into structured data,
and people probably think, well,contracts are pretty well
structured already, and that'strue.
But there's a million differentways to say things in a
contract, and sometimes there'san advantage to being a little
(01:56):
ambiguous, depending on whatside you're on.
M m-hmm.
< affirmative>.
So we are turning it intomachine readable data and
structured data that i f t henidentified, extracted, and then
can be sent to wherever theyneed that data to be stored.
So Salesforce is a good example.
A lot of people keep contractualdata in their Salesforce
instance, and then they can usethat data if questions arise
(02:19):
about the obligations in thatcontract, or even pre-execution.
You know, if they just w ant asense of what's in this
contract, what do I need tofocus my time on, w e can help
them identify those thingswithout them having to read 50
pages of Legalese.
Play the King (02:34):
Gotcha.
That's super interesting.
Most founders have some sort ofstory about experiencing this
pain themselves before they gotthe insight to start the
company.
I wonder how you came at this.
Were you an attorney?
Were you someone in businesswho, you know, you were like,
Why is this so tough?
Tell me that story.
Jordan Ritenour (02:49):
Yeah, I, I felt the pain personally.
I was actually still in lawschool, working at a tech
company on their legal teaminhouse.
And a lot of what I was doingwas, was contract review and red
lines and negotiations.
And I'd be handed an assignmentand say, Hey, you know, from the
supervising attorney would saysomething like, Hey, I did
something similar to this sixmonths ago.
(03:10):
See if you can dig through theshare drive, find it, and make
sure the terms we care about,line up like, huh.
Okay.
I don't know what contractyou're talking about.
I don't know what termsmatter to us.
, it's really amazingactually.
You know, law school is a greateducational experience, but not
necessarily the best preparationfor doing the nitty gritty legal
(03:33):
work that most recent grads findthemselves doing.
So I would spend a lot of timejust trying to find relevant
contracts to compare againstthis new one.
You know, reading them, makingsure the terms all sounded
pretty similar to me.
It probably took me 10 timeslonger than it would someone
who's experienced.
So, this company that I was at,actually focuses on data science
(03:56):
and helping leaders makedecisions based on data and
finding patterns.
I thought, isn't it interestingthat this doesn't really seem to
exist for legal work?
Like, is there a way toaggregate the experience of all
these, these super experiencedattorneys that have done this
for 10 years and give me a toolto help understand what matters
(04:19):
to the organization, what I needto be worried about and help me
make decisions on what I need todo to review this contract and
get it approved.
So, you know, just kind ofthought of that in the back of
my mind, and really didn't havea light bulb moment until after
I'd left this job.
I got a call from a salesperson,who I've been negotiating a
(04:40):
contract with.
And really the edits I'd made totheir standard sales form were
very minor.
There wasn't anything tooserious, but I sent it back like
two months later, he gave me acall and said, Hey, legal
reviewed, your red lines, nomajor issues.
I think we're good to, to closethis out and accept those and
let's get this signed.
(05:01):
It was like, Wow, I don't evenwork there anymore.
I haven't thought about that jobin six weeks, probably.
Um, but I can put you in touchwith with who's there now
and took over.
I started to wonder, is thisjust a problem for everybody?
Is this, you know, legal slow?
Like, think about this contractwas the only thing holding them
(05:22):
up from closing revenue and ittook three months mm-hmm.
, basically to say,Hey, yeah, we're good.
So that really, put me on thepath of looking at how big is
this problem?
And of course, lawyers orin-house legal teams have the
reputation for being slow andholding up deals.
And so my co-founder and Istarted going down this path
(05:43):
testing technology and seeingwhat we could do to help help
folks understand contracts andmove a lot faster.
Play the King (05:51):
Is part of the issue, maybe a way to put it
that like, institutionalknowledge is so key in law firms
and legal organizations withincompanies.
You know, if someone leaves,part of the knowledge goes with
them and people are left alittle bit blinded there.
So maybe use that as an entreeto talk about some of the other
(06:12):
ways that data visibility isimportant for, for organizations
that are run well.
Jordan Ritenour (06:18):
Yeah, that's a really good point.
The institutional knowledge isreally key.
And if you think about, oncethat person leaves who's maybe
negotiated the first, the newcompany, you've got a hundred
customers there might be oneperson who knows everything
there is to know about all thosecontracts.
They did them all personally,they leave.
(06:39):
If you haven't really beenkeeping good track of the
obligations and stuff thatknowledge leaves with them.
Someone else is gonna have to gothrough those.
And we talked about it a littlebit briefly earlier, but if
they're just somewhere on in PDFformat, sitting in the share
drive, it's really hard toreally go through, basically
have to start over and gothrough those contracts one by
one.
(06:59):
An example, you can think abouteveryone's familiar with now is
COVID 19 hits.
Every organization wants toknow, okay, does our force
majeure clause cover pandemics?
Is it explicit?
Is it implied?
You know, act of God type thing!So, a lot of companies had to go
through hundreds, thousands ofthousands of contracts to figure
(07:22):
out where their risk was onthat.
So this data visibility isreally key.
And we like to think about thecontract as really the basis for
every business relationship.
So maybe less important ifyou're more consumer facing and
it's kind of a take it or leaveit thing.
But any B2B organization,there's gonna be some red line,
(07:43):
some edits.
It's especially important ifyou're working off customer
paper, third party paper and youcan always rely on, you know, we
have maybe some minor edits toour standard template.
So the, the data visibilitybecomes key.
Whether you are looking atexecuted contracts, maybe you
have a whole repository,hundreds of thousands of
(08:04):
documents, the world changes.
You need to be able to answerquestions about that quickly.
And really it shouldn't just beon the legal team to do that.
You know, marketing needs toknow if they can put the
customer logo on the website,that's usually covered by the
contract or customer successneeds to know when the
contract's gonna renew and whenthey need to get back in touch.
Because the customer has an optout clause, before renewal
(08:27):
finance team, needs to knowabout payment terms and price
escalation notifications and allthat.
So it really affects the entireorganization from post execution
standpoint.
But this information is reallyvaluable pre-execution too.
So if you think about contractcomes in, legal team needs to
(08:47):
triage it, they could provide anestimate on how long it would
take to go through how manyturns they expected.
This is the kind of data weprovide and want to empower
legal teams to have so that theycan present this data to the
rest of the organization,whether it's the CRO or the CEO,
so they can forecast pipelinemore accurately.
(09:08):
And really the legal team canjust move a lot faster through
the documents if they don't haveto review absolutely everything.
They have a tool that says, Hey,there's five things in here that
you tend to worry about.
The rest of it is good, but youcan focus your time on those,
those few things that, you know,might come back to bite you
later.
Play the King (09:27):
You guys use ai, it's part of your url, ClearLaw
.ai.
It seems integral to what youdo.
And yet, so for someone like me,a lay person, I don't, you know,
I'm, you're like, Yeah, we useai.
I'm like, great, that soundscool.
Tell me why that's importantbeyond that?
What is it about the modernoffice suite, whether it's
(09:50):
Microsoft, Google, whatever,that didn't solve this problem.
Why do you need some sort ofspecialized software for this?
Jordan Ritenour (09:56):
Yeah, that's a good question because we do
hear, I heard Google's workingon this and yeah, they are.
Google wanted to devoteresources to NLP, Natural
Language Processing or AI deeplearning technology.
They've obviously got a lot ofresources to do that.
So specifically, our models aretrained on contract language, so
(10:18):
we're very focused and can addnew use cases quickly because of
that focus.
And our entire data pipeline istuned to contract or I'd say
contract adjacent language.
So you think about an invoice orsomething like that.
And this specialization allowsus to just be a lot more
(10:39):
accurate.
So when you say, Hey, AI soundscool, like what did that mean?
Our data annotation pipeline,our training models, are trained
on hundreds of thousands ofcontracts to parse, identify
language characteristics andthen make it easy to extract
those.
and because there are so manydifferent ways to say
(11:01):
essentially the same thing, youneed to be really focused on,
okay, is this the same thing?
Is this just another way ofsaying termination for
convenience?
Or is this something different?
And, you know, maybe it'sactually termination for breach,
even though it kind of lookslike termination for
convenience.
So we're specialized on this andit allows us to move faster a nd
(11:23):
be more accurate.
But also we're focused ondelivering this data.
It's really our only job.
And so a lot of customers andorganizations don't want
thousands of software vendors ifthey can consolidate under one
roof, great.
So for us, getting this datainto their system of record
rather than trying to replace asystem, has been really
(11:45):
important.
So we want to work with theirexisting CLM Contract Life Cycle
Management tool, or if they'rejust on Salesforce and that's
where they store theircontracts, We can receive the
data from Salesforce, we cansend it back.
That makes it a lot moreefficient and accessible for the
rest of the team.
You don't have to have folksswitching platforms or logging
(12:08):
into a different tool orlearning how to use a different
tool.
The data's already sitting wherethey want it to fit and where
they can make the most use ofit.
So that's why we're focusedsolely on just being contract
intelligence, closing the datadeficit and delivering that data
to.
I didn't mention Microsoft Word,but we do work with them.
We have a word add in.
(12:29):
That's where a lot of attorneysand contract managers review
contracts.
So the data needs to bedelivered there.
That's where they can make themost use of it.
Play the King (12:37):
So there's this concept of the job apocalypse,
right?
Where it's usually in referenceto like less skilled labor,
right?
It's, you know, truck drivers,someone who you know, is going
to lose their job to a machineor a computer i'm wandering if
you get asked about this quiteoften, I wonder what you say
about it.
It seems like a societal problemless than a specific company
(12:59):
problem.
You can see in each instance whya safer driver or someone who's
less exploited.
A machine being less exploitedwould would be a good thing.
Overall though it could createsome complex situations for
societies.
How do you think about that?
What is your role as a companythat does AI here?
Jordan Ritenour (13:19):
We did use to get that question a lot.
I think people, legalprofessionals have realized,
okay, there's a long ways to gobefore getting completely
replaced.
So I think part of thatrealization is like, yeah, AI is
great for specific purposes, butit can't yet replace the
(13:40):
experience and kind of intuitionthat or an experienced attorney
would have.
So what we're focused on is, isdelivering that data, making
their job easier, and does thatmean that maybe legal teams
don't need to hire as often oras frequently?
Maybe they can do more with lesscertainly, but obviously that
(14:00):
that's the case for any newtechnology that folks get more
productive.
You need fewer of them to do therepetitive and simpler less
complex tasks.
But with that, new jobs arealways created, right?
So when we first started legaloperators or legal operations,
was pretty new.
(14:20):
And now it's just, I don't know,I don't have exact data on this,
but I'd say 10 x increase in thenumber of employees who would
call themselves legal operationsor legal operators.
And that's really driven by thisidea that, okay, legal teams
need to get more data driven.
We need to make use of the datathat we have.
(14:42):
And so while there may be,contract specialists, maybe I'm
making that up a little bit,that role has been shifted now
to maybe a hybrid contractspecialist, legal operator role.
And yeah, i t's, I guess it'ssomething we think about too,
because you don't want to have anegative effect on society,
obviously.
It's an interesting time forevery industry a s more things
(15:06):
get automated and you can domore w ith less.
And I, I think my personalopinion is we're kind of on that
edge where some jobs have beenremoved.
You c ould think about horse andbuggy drivers right at t he, the
turn of the 20th century.
As cars became more widespread,horse stables probably needed to
(15:30):
employ fewer people.
But we haven't yet gotten to thestage where a a ton of new jobs
and new professions have beencreated around this new industry
yet, and I personally, I'm I'mlooking forward to a lot more
jobs in space.
I think that's the next excitingthing anyways.
Play the King (15:49):
Yeah, just the problem of progress, right?
Creates change.
You started off by telling usabout how you w ere, you know, a
law student working at atechnology firm.
I don't know if you went backand ever practiced law or if you
said, Oh, light bulbs going off,I'm gooing to do this now.
What have you learned aboutstarting a technology company
(16:10):
that you'd wish you'd known fromthe beginning?
And maybe, do you wish you'dbeen a junior product manager at
a tech firm?
Would that have set you upbetter than, than going to law
school and, you know, learningabout the constitution?
I guess?
Jordan Ritenour (16:23):
Yeah, that's a good question.
I guess I have thought aboutthat a little bit.
I did say earlier law school wasgreat education and great
experience.
It's definitely not foreveryone.
If you don't really wantpractice law, I'm not sure law
schools a a great decisionfinancially, it's a very
(16:46):
expensive, I do not regret it.
I get to wear that hat for mycurrent role.
I do a lot of legal contractwork.
I am a licensed attorney and Italk to attorneys all day.
So it has been really good forme.
Play the King (17:03):
What is the thing that annoys you as a tech
founder the most about lawyersand what annoys you the most as
a lawyer about tech people?
What strengths do you wishlawyers could take from?
Techos is maybe a nicer, morepositive way to put it.
Jordan Ritenour (17:16):
, well,
I guess this is a strength,
right?
The law school teaches you to bean issue identifier, an issue
spotter.
So, you know, you read some oldcase and you have to spot the
issues that the judge thoughtwas, or the justice thought was
important in deciding the case,right?
And how they think about thatand what pros and cons did they
(17:39):
weigh.
So you're really good at issuespotting.
And I would say that's a veryuseful and powerful skill.
When you are a customer orprospect or a potential buyer of
new software.
It can be tough right?
(17:59):
To overcome some objectionsbecause we've had a few
conversations where the attorneymay say something like, I had
this thing like 10 years agowhere we had to do this X, Y and
Z, does your technology handlethat?
I kind of have to think like,wait, so you, you had this issue
(18:20):
once in 10 years and you thinkAI is, is gonna solve that
problem for you?
And the answer is no.
We have it run across that yetwe, we don't have any experience
with that.
So no, we do not solve thatproblem.
And I think it's the personalitytype, right?
I'm sure they're in every field.
I think law school gets you verygood at spotting and remembering
(18:43):
every issue.
So, that can be a challengesometimes.
Play the King (18:46):
Yeah.
those two worlds are sointeresting to me.
One seems really rigid and theother seems really, really
loose.
And so the fact that you areable to sort of have a foot in
both of those worlds is reallyinteresting to me.
And I'm observations on one tothe other, you know?
Jordan Ritenour (19:04):
Yeah.
I think this is more of aoverall comment.
There has been a lot ofdisappointment in legal tech.
There have been some famousblowouts companies have raised a
lot of money and not reallydelivered value.
So it works both ways.
(19:25):
I I think that it jades thepotential customer base, legal
professionals and it also makesthe investment community a
little jaded.
But with that said, there are aton of businesses that are doing
really well in legal tech,growing quickly, getting user
(19:45):
adoption.
I guess one takeaway would be,have some patience, and that was
tough for me.
But we've had to evolve on whatwe're doing, how we're
approaching the market.
We weren't always trying to workwith CLMs, but if we didn't have
patience, we wouldn't havediscovered this new big
(20:08):
opportunity for us to really bea data provider of legal
language, customers, legallanguage, their own contracts.
So yeah, sometimes it just takesa little longer and you have to
learn that along the way.
Yeah, patience has been key, Ithink! It's going to be key for
(20:28):
both sides, the investmentcommunity and then also, t he
legal professionals doing thework.
Play the King (20:32):
Those are two really good answers.
I was expecting something alittle more Pat and not because
you haven't been an insightfulspeaker, but,those are great
answers! I enjoyed that.
Jordan really enjoyed talking toyou.
Why don't you tell people wherethey can find more about
ClearLaw?
Jordan Ritenour (20:47):
Yeah, we have a website, www.clearlaw.ai.
We're on LinkedIn and we'regoint to be putting out some big
announcements here in the nearfuture, with some partnerships
that we've signed and we're justgetting the marketing messaging
ready.
So this is a really excitingtime for us and thanks for
(21:07):
having me today.
Play the King (21:08):
Of course.
Yeah, really enjoy speaking withyou.
Thanks Jordan.
Jordan Ritenour (21:10):
Appreciate it.
This podcast is sponsored by OMI, the company
that makes CRM Work! Today'sguest is Jordan Ritenour, the
founder and CEO of ClearLaw.
Jordan, welcome.
I'm really excited to talk withyou.
The first thing I want to askyou about is something that I
noticed on the ClearLaw Landingpage.
And you know, you get there andyou see in big letters, big
words.
We're closing the data deficitfor legal teams.
(00:22):
And I wonder what you mean bydata deficit?
Jordan Ritenour (00:25):
Yeah, Well, first, thanks for having me.
It's great to be here with youand yeah, we're closing on the
data deficit for legal.
That's something we hear fromcustomers, from prospects all
the time.
The legal team, in-house,corporate legal teams.
They feel like they're at a datadeficit, compared to their
counterparts, whether it's, youknow, at the C-suite level and
CMO or whatever the case or justthe individual contributors who
(00:50):
see all the data that'savailable and usable and
presentable by marketing andsales and operations.
Legal feels like, yeah, we knowhow many contracts we reviewed
last quarter.
We have some insights around howI'm spending my time.
But a lot of the data that wouldbe useful for them resides in a
(01:13):
executed, signed PDF contract,somewhere on a share drive or,
you know, Google Drive, somerepository.
And really for them to get valuefrom that, they have to go in
and do a lot more work,searching and finding, then
putting that data into maybe anExcel spreadsheet or Salesforce.
(01:35):
So we're trying to help themunderstand what's in the
contract without them having todo that work.
And so we turn contractuallanguage into structured data,
and people probably think, well,contracts are pretty well
structured already, and that'strue.
But there's a million differentways to say things in a
contract, and sometimes there'san advantage to being a little
(01:56):
ambiguous, depending on whatside you're on.
M m-hmm.
< affirmative>.
So we are turning it intomachine readable data and
structured data that i f t henidentified, extracted, and then
can be sent to wherever theyneed that data to be stored.
So Salesforce is a good example.
A lot of people keep contractualdata in their Salesforce
instance, and then they can usethat data if questions arise
(02:19):
about the obligations in thatcontract, or even pre-execution.
You know, if they just w ant asense of what's in this
contract, what do I need tofocus my time on, w e can help
them identify those thingswithout them having to read 50
pages of Legalese.
Play the King (02:34):
Gotcha.
That's super interesting.
Most founders have some sort ofstory about experiencing this
pain themselves before they gotthe insight to start the
company.
I wonder how you came at this.
Were you an attorney?
Were you someone in businesswho, you know, you were like,
Why is this so tough?
Tell me that story.
Jordan Ritenour (02:49):
Yeah, I, I felt the pain personally.
I was actually still in lawschool, working at a tech
company on their legal teaminhouse.
And a lot of what I was doingwas, was contract review and red
lines and negotiations.
And I'd be handed an assignmentand say, Hey, you know, from the
supervising attorney would saysomething like, Hey, I did
something similar to this sixmonths ago.
(03:10):
See if you can dig through theshare drive, find it, and make
sure the terms we care about,line up like, huh.
Okay.
I don't know what contractyou're talking about.
I don't know what terms
You know, law school is a greateducational experience, but not
necessarily the best preparationfor doing the nitty gritty legal
(03:33):
work that most recent grads findthemselves doing.
So I would spend a lot of timejust trying to find relevant
contracts to compare againstthis new one.
You know, reading them, makingsure the terms all sounded
pretty similar to me.
It probably took me 10 timeslonger than it would someone
who's experienced.
So, this company that I was at,actually focuses on data science
(03:56):
and helping leaders makedecisions based on data and
finding patterns.
I thought, isn't it interestingthat this doesn't really seem to
exist for legal work?
Like, is there a way toaggregate the experience of all
these, these super experiencedattorneys that have done this
for 10 years and give me a toolto help understand what matters
(04:19):
to the organization, what I needto be worried about and help me
make decisions on what I need todo to review this contract and
get it approved.
So, you know, just kind ofthought of that in the back of
my mind, and really didn't havea light bulb moment until after
I'd left this job.
I got a call from a salesperson,who I've been negotiating a
(04:40):
contract with.
And really the edits I'd made totheir standard sales form were
very minor.
There wasn't anything tooserious, but I sent it back like
two months later, he gave me acall and said, Hey, legal
reviewed, your red lines, nomajor issues.
I think we're good to, to closethis out and accept those and
let's get this signed.
(05:01):
It was like, Wow, I don't evenwork there anymore.
I haven't thought about that jobin six weeks, probably.
Um, but I can put you in touchwith
and took over.
I started to wonder, is thisjust a problem for everybody?
Is this, you know, legal slow?
Like, think about this contractwas the only thing holding them
(05:22):
up from closing revenue and ittook three months mm-hmm.
So that really, put me on thepath of looking at how big is
this problem?
And of course, lawyers orin-house legal teams have the
reputation for being slow andholding up deals.
And so my co-founder and Istarted going down this path
(05:43):
testing technology and seeingwhat we could do to help help
folks understand contracts andmove a lot faster.
Play the King (05:51):
Is part of the issue, maybe a way to put it
that like, institutionalknowledge is so key in law firms
and legal organizations withincompanies.
You know, if someone leaves,part of the knowledge goes with
them and people are left alittle bit blinded there.
So maybe use that as an entreeto talk about some of the other
(06:12):
ways that data visibility isimportant for, for organizations
that are run well.
Jordan Ritenour (06:18):
Yeah, that's a really good point.
The institutional knowledge isreally key.
And if you think about, oncethat person leaves who's maybe
negotiated the first, the newcompany, you've got a hundred
customers there might be oneperson who knows everything
there is to know about all thosecontracts.
They did them all personally,they leave.
(06:39):
If you haven't really beenkeeping good track of the
obligations and stuff thatknowledge leaves with them.
Someone else is gonna have to gothrough those.
And we talked about it a littlebit briefly earlier, but if
they're just somewhere on in PDFformat, sitting in the share
drive, it's really hard toreally go through, basically
have to start over and gothrough those contracts one by
one.
(06:59):
An example, you can think abouteveryone's familiar with now is
COVID 19 hits.
Every organization wants toknow, okay, does our force
majeure clause cover pandemics?
Is it explicit?
Is it implied?
You know, act of God type thing!So, a lot of companies had to go
through hundreds, thousands ofthousands of contracts to figure
(07:22):
out where their risk was onthat.
So this data visibility isreally key.
And we like to think about thecontract as really the basis for
every business relationship.
So maybe less important ifyou're more consumer facing and
it's kind of a take it or leaveit thing.
But any B2B organization,there's gonna be some red line,
(07:43):
some edits.
It's especially important ifyou're working off customer
paper, third party paper and youcan always rely on, you know, we
have maybe some minor edits toour standard template.
So the, the data visibilitybecomes key.
Whether you are looking atexecuted contracts, maybe you
have a whole repository,hundreds of thousands of
(08:04):
documents, the world changes.
You need to be able to answerquestions about that quickly.
And really it shouldn't just beon the legal team to do that.
You know, marketing needs toknow if they can put the
customer logo on the website,that's usually covered by the
contract or customer successneeds to know when the
contract's gonna renew and whenthey need to get back in touch.
Because the customer has an optout clause, before renewal
(08:27):
finance team, needs to knowabout payment terms and price
escalation notifications and allthat.
So it really affects the entireorganization from post execution
standpoint.
But this information is reallyvaluable pre-execution too.
So if you think about contractcomes in, legal team needs to
(08:47):
triage it, they could provide anestimate on how long it would
take to go through how manyturns they expected.
This is the kind of data weprovide and want to empower
legal teams to have so that theycan present this data to the
rest of the organization,whether it's the CRO or the CEO,
so they can forecast pipelinemore accurately.
(09:08):
And really the legal team canjust move a lot faster through
the documents if they don't haveto review absolutely everything.
They have a tool that says, Hey,there's five things in here that
you tend to worry about.
The rest of it is good, but youcan focus your time on those,
those few things that, you know,might come back to bite you
later.
Play the King (09:27):
You guys use ai, it's part of your url, ClearLaw
.ai.
It seems integral to what youdo.
And yet, so for someone like me,a lay person, I don't, you know,
I'm, you're like, Yeah, we useai.
I'm like, great, that soundscool.
Tell me why that's importantbeyond that?
What is it about the modernoffice suite, whether it's
(09:50):
Microsoft, Google, whatever,that didn't solve this problem.
Why do you need some sort ofspecialized software for this?
Jordan Ritenour (09:56):
Yeah, that's a good question because we do
hear, I heard Google's workingon this and yeah, they are.
Google wanted to devoteresources to NLP, Natural
Language Processing or AI deeplearning technology.
They've obviously got a lot ofresources to do that.
So specifically, our models aretrained on contract language, so
(10:18):
we're very focused and can addnew use cases quickly because of
that focus.
And our entire data pipeline istuned to contract or I'd say
contract adjacent language.
So you think about an invoice orsomething like that.
And this specialization allowsus to just be a lot more
(10:39):
accurate.
So when you say, Hey, AI soundscool, like what did that mean?
Our data annotation pipeline,our training models, are trained
on hundreds of thousands ofcontracts to parse, identify
language characteristics andthen make it easy to extract
those.
and because there are so manydifferent ways to say
(11:01):
essentially the same thing, youneed to be really focused on,
okay, is this the same thing?
Is this just another way ofsaying termination for
convenience?
Or is this something different?
And, you know, maybe it'sactually termination for breach,
even though it kind of lookslike termination for
convenience.
So we're specialized on this andit allows us to move faster a nd
(11:23):
be more accurate.
But also we're focused ondelivering this data.
It's really our only job.
And so a lot of customers andorganizations don't want
thousands of software vendors ifthey can consolidate under one
roof, great.
So for us, getting this datainto their system of record
rather than trying to replace asystem, has been really
(11:45):
important.
So we want to work with theirexisting CLM Contract Life Cycle
Management tool, or if they'rejust on Salesforce and that's
where they store theircontracts, We can receive the
data from Salesforce, we cansend it back.
That makes it a lot moreefficient and accessible for the
rest of the team.
You don't have to have folksswitching platforms or logging
(12:08):
into a different tool orlearning how to use a different
tool.
The data's already sitting wherethey want it to fit and where
they can make the most use ofit.
So that's why we're focusedsolely on just being contract
intelligence, closing the datadeficit and delivering that data
to.
I didn't mention Microsoft Word,but we do work with them.
We have a word add in.
(12:29):
That's where a lot of attorneysand contract managers review
contracts.
So the data needs to bedelivered there.
That's where they can make themost use of it.
Play the King (12:37):
So there's this concept of the job apocalypse,
right?
Where it's usually in referenceto like less skilled labor,
right?
It's, you know, truck drivers,someone who you know, is going
to lose their job to a machineor a computer i'm wandering if
you get asked about this quiteoften, I wonder what you say
about it.
It seems like a societal problemless than a specific company
(12:59):
problem.
You can see in each instance whya safer driver or someone who's
less exploited.
A machine being less exploitedwould would be a good thing.
Overall though it could createsome complex situations for
societies.
How do you think about that?
What is your role as a companythat does AI here?
Jordan Ritenour (13:19):
We did use to get that question a lot.
I think people, legalprofessionals have realized,
okay, there's a long ways to gobefore getting completely
replaced.
So I think part of thatrealization is like, yeah, AI is
great for specific purposes, butit can't yet replace the
(13:40):
experience and kind of intuitionthat or an experienced attorney
would have.
So what we're focused on is, isdelivering that data, making
their job easier, and does thatmean that maybe legal teams
don't need to hire as often oras frequently?
Maybe they can do more with lesscertainly, but obviously that
(14:00):
that's the case for any newtechnology that folks get more
productive.
You need fewer of them to do therepetitive and simpler less
complex tasks.
But with that, new jobs arealways created, right?
So when we first started legaloperators or legal operations,
was pretty new.
(14:20):
And now it's just, I don't know,I don't have exact data on this,
but I'd say 10 x increase in thenumber of employees who would
call themselves legal operationsor legal operators.
And that's really driven by thisidea that, okay, legal teams
need to get more data driven.
We need to make use of the datathat we have.
(14:42):
And so while there may be,contract specialists, maybe I'm
making that up a little bit,that role has been shifted now
to maybe a hybrid contractspecialist, legal operator role.
And yeah, i t's, I guess it'ssomething we think about too,
because you don't want to have anegative effect on society,
obviously.
It's an interesting time forevery industry a s more things
(15:06):
get automated and you can domore w ith less.
And I, I think my personalopinion is we're kind of on that
edge where some jobs have beenremoved.
You c ould think about horse andbuggy drivers right at t he, the
turn of the 20th century.
As cars became more widespread,horse stables probably needed to
(15:30):
employ fewer people.
But we haven't yet gotten to thestage where a a ton of new jobs
and new professions have beencreated around this new industry
yet, and I personally, I'm I'mlooking forward to a lot more
jobs in space.
I think that's the next excitingthing anyways.
Play the King (15:49):
Yeah, just the problem of progress, right?
Creates change.
You started off by telling usabout how you w ere, you know, a
law student working at atechnology firm.
I don't know if you went backand ever practiced law or if you
said, Oh, light bulbs going off,I'm gooing to do this now.
What have you learned aboutstarting a technology company
(16:10):
that you'd wish you'd known fromthe beginning?
And maybe, do you wish you'dbeen a junior product manager at
a tech firm?
Would that have set you upbetter than, than going to law
school and, you know, learningabout the constitution?
I guess
Jordan Ritenour (16:23):
Yeah, that's a good question.
I guess I have thought aboutthat a little bit.
I did say earlier law school wasgreat education and great
experience.
It's definitely not foreveryone.
If you don't really wantpractice law, I'm not sure law
schools a a great decisionfinancially, it's a very
(16:46):
expensive, I do not regret it.
I get to wear that hat for mycurrent role.
I do a lot of legal contractwork.
I am a licensed attorney and Italk to attorneys all day.
So it has been really good forme.
Play the King (17:03):
What is the thing that annoys you as a tech
founder the most about lawyersand what annoys you the most as
a lawyer about tech people?
What strengths do you wishlawyers could take from
Techos is maybe a nicer, morepositive way to put it.
Jordan Ritenour (17:16):
right?
The law school teaches you to bean issue identifier, an issue
spotter.
So, you know, you read some oldcase and you have to spot the
issues that the judge thoughtwas, or the justice thought was
important in deciding the case,right?
And how they think about thatand what pros and cons did they
(17:39):
weigh.
So you're really good at issuespotting.
And I would say that's a veryuseful and powerful skill.
When you are a customer orprospect or a potential buyer of
new software.
It can be tough right?
(17:59):
To overcome some objectionsbecause we've had a few
conversations where the attorneymay say something like, I had
this thing like 10 years agowhere we had to do this X, Y and
Z, does your technology handlethat?
I kind of have to think like,wait, so you, you had this issue
(18:20):
once in 10 years and you thinkAI is, is gonna solve that
problem for you?
And the answer is no.
We have it run across that yetwe, we don't have any experience
with that.
So no, we do not solve thatproblem.
And I think it's the personalitytype, right?
I'm sure they're in every field.
I think law school gets you verygood at spotting and remembering
(18:43):
every issue
So, that can be a challengesometimes.
Play the King (18:46):
Yeah.
those two worlds are sointeresting to me.
One seems really rigid and theother seems really, really
loose.
And so the fact that you areable to sort of have a foot in
both of those worlds is reallyinteresting to me.
And I'm observations on one tothe other, you know?
Jordan Ritenour (19:04):
Yeah.
I think this is more of aoverall comment.
There has been a lot ofdisappointment in legal tech.
There have been some famousblowouts companies have raised a
lot of money and not reallydelivered value.
So it works both ways.
(19:25):
I I think that it jades thepotential customer base, legal
professionals and it also makesthe investment community a
little jaded.
But with that said, there are aton of businesses that are doing
really well in legal tech,growing quickly, getting user
(19:45):
adoption.
I guess one takeaway would be,have some patience, and that was
tough for me.
But we've had to evolve on whatwe're doing, how we're
approaching the market.
We weren't always trying to workwith CLMs, but if we didn't have
patience, we wouldn't havediscovered this new big
(20:08):
opportunity for us to really bea data provider of legal
language, customers, legallanguage, their own contracts.
So yeah, sometimes it just takesa little longer and you have to
learn that along the way.
Yeah, patience has been key, Ithink! It's going to be key for
(20:28):
both sides, the investmentcommunity and then also, t he
legal professionals doing thework.
Play the King (20:32):
Those are two really good answers.
I was expecting something alittle more Pat and not because
you haven't been an insightfulspeaker, but,those are great
answers! I enjoyed that.
Jordan really enjoyed talking toyou.
Why don't you tell people wherethey can find more about
ClearLaw?
Jordan Ritenour (20:47):
Yeah, we have a website, www.clearlaw.ai.
We're on LinkedIn and we'regoint to be putting out some big
announcements here in the nearfuture, with some partnerships
that we've signed and we're justgetting the marketing messaging
ready.
So this is a really excitingtime for us and thanks for
(21:07):
having me today.
Play the King (21:08):
Of course.
Yeah, really enjoy speaking withyou.
Thanks Jordan.
Jordan Ritenour (21:10):
Appreciate it.
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